by Lauren Esker
Handcuffed to the Bear
Shifter Agents #1
Lauren Esker
Handcuffed to the Bear
Published by Icefall Press, August 2015
Copyright ©Layla Lawlor/Lauren Esker 2015
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Also by Lauren Esker
Preview of Guard Wolf On Duty (Shifter Agents #2)
Chapter One
Casey's first thought was, How did rocks get in my bed?
Her second thought was that maybe the rocks were actually in her head.
Okay, I'm never drinking anything Billy mixes for me again. Her boss's favorite bartender had a heavy hand with the alcohol.
Although ... she'd only had one drink. That she remembered.
The annual company mixer for Lion's Share Software, the tech firm she worked for, was held each year on a cruise ship off the coast of Washington. This was the first time Casey had been invited, after working her way up from a lowly mailroom employee to nothing less than the administrative assistant for Roger Fallon, the head of the company himself, in just two years.
All the high-level employees were shifters of one kind or another. It should have been an opportunity for Casey to spend two days among her own kind, making professional connections and sipping expensive drinks. They would be sailing up Puget Sound, around the scenic San Juan Islands, and then back to Seattle by lunchtime the following day.
At this point, though, all she remembered clearly was sailing out of Seattle. Billy had opened up the bar, and everyone was mingling out on the deck. She'd had a drink ... or possibly two ...
Shit, did I get roofied? What the hell happened to me?
She was slowly becoming aware that not all of her physical misery was because of a hangover. She was nauseated and trembling, but some of the shivering was because it was actually quite cold and damp. Those really were rocks pressing into her backside.
Her .... very naked backside.
Startled, and even more worried, Casey peeled her eyes open. It was dim, but not the flat darkness of a room with the doors and windows closed. She was outside somewhere. As her senses came slowly back online, she began to register the myriad little smells and sounds of a forest at night. Leaves rustled overhead; tiny things skittered in the darkness. She could smell wet leaf mold and the acrid tang where a fox had marked its territory. Since she was in her human form, her senses weren't much sharper than a non-shifter's, but she could feel the lynx instincts inside her stirring lazily at the proximity of small prey. Her awareness of her lynx side was fuzzy, though, muffled by the lingering vestiges of whatever the hell had happened to her.
And she really was naked. Rocks and wet leaves pressed into uncomfortable parts of her anatomy. Had she been—? Her mind shied away from even asking the question. She didn't feel terribly uncomfortable in the way that a person might if they were—if they'd been—
Raped, she thought. Don't dance around it. You're naked in the woods and the last thing you remember is having a drink at a party. The implications are obvious.
But she really didn't feel like she'd had sex anytime recently, forcible or otherwise. Mostly she just felt achy and miserable and like she might throw up if she sat up too suddenly.
And also naked. Very naked.
Casey started to raise a hand to investigate her physical condition, and was brought up short by a sharp jingling, like a heavy bracelet, and a tug on her wrist.
Wow, okay, that was twelve shades of not good. She was chained to something. It was too dark to see what it was. A log?
Casey gritted her teeth and sat up. Her stomach heaved, but once the initial wave of dizziness passed, she felt better now that she was vertical. At least, it made her feel a little more in control of the situation.
The in-control feeling went away fast when she discovered that she wasn't chained to a log, she was handcuffed to a dead guy.
"Oh Jesus," she whispered.
She gave the cuffs an experimental little tug. They were locked around her left wrist and Dead Guy's right one. He was a very large man, lying facedown in the damp dead leaves of the forest floor with his head twisted to the side, away from her. And he was naked too.
What. How. Why?
Then an even worse thought occurred to her: maybe she was supposed to be dead, too. Shifters were generally more resilient than non-shifters, and it was possible that she'd been drugged—or, rather, poisoned—with something that was supposed to kill her, and then left in the woods with the other victim.
If only her memories weren't such a blur. If only she could think.
How did they catch me? What did I do?
There was a small, soft sigh from the body next to her. Casey nearly jumped out of her skin, and then laughed softly at herself. He wasn't dead either. Oh, thank God.
Which still left her handcuffed to a naked stranger in the woods.
Not the best day she'd ever had.
The naked guy stirred a little, and then subsided back into sleep or unconsciousness. Casey decided not to bother him quite yet—if he felt anything like she did, it was probably merciful to let him sleep a bit longer—and instead took stock of herself.
She didn't seem to be hurt, other than the headache. Her body was just like it had always been: wide hips, round thighs, a little more padding than she really wanted, and ample breasts that she was currently more aware of than usual, since normally they were contained in an industrial-strength bra to keep them from jiggling all over the place when she moved.
Her headache was mercifully going away, but she was starting to shiver in the night's damp chill. It might be summer, but she was still in the Pacific Northwest—at least, she hoped she was still in the Pacific Northwest—and the nights were cool.
Better get up and get moving. Which means waking up Sleeping Beauty here.
Casey rose to her knees and bent over her unexpected companion.
By now her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, as much as they were going to. Her new handcuff buddy was a white guy with dark hair and broad, powerfully muscled shoulders. Even lying down, he was big. She didn't really want to think about how tall he'd be standing up.
She started to reach for his shoulder, then pulled her hand back when she noticed a long scar across the shoulder blade, going down his back. What was that from, a knife? Now that she was looking more closely, scars marked his skin like a constellation of past violence. There was a long set of parallel stripes over his ribs that looked like claw marks, and a little puckered scar above his left hip where she was pretty sure a bullet had gone through.
Great, she thought. So not only am I stuck in the woods with an enormous naked stranger, but he's the kind who gets into fights a lot. Really violent fights. Better and better.
Casey sat back on her naked haunches and studied him. She wished her h
ead would stop hurting, and that she had even the faintest clue who he was, or whether he was in league with the people who'd put her here.
There were tattoos on his right arm, the one she was handcuffed to. Casey had a little ink on her ankle, a small rose, but this guy had quite a bit more. She gave the cuffs a tug, shifting his limp arm so she could see it better.
The one on his forearm was a dark blur, and she had to tilt her head to make it out: an assault rifle and the word Defend.
Army, maybe?
Much more dramatic was the big, elaborate tattoo that covered his upper arm, wrapping around his shoulder. It was a snarling bear, standing rampant on its back legs. Grizzly, she thought.
Between the grizzly tat and the claw scars, odds were pretty good he was a shifter like her. Wendy used to be able to say she could tell by the way people smelled, but Casey couldn't. Maybe she just hadn't spent enough time around her own kind to be able to.
Thinking of Wendy made a little ripple travel across her skin, a shiver like the fur rising along the spine of her lynx form.
What do I tell him about me?
Play dumb, she decided. Play innocent victim until she figured out more about who he was and what he was doing here. Maybe someone who got into fights with people who had knives and guns would be a good ally ... if he didn't turn out to be an even more effective enemy.
She laid her hand on his shoulder. The skin was cool to the touch. Casey gave him a hesitant shake and called, "Hey? Mister?"
Chapter Two
Somewhere a mosquito was buzzing. Jack raised a hand and tried to swat it away.
The mosquito's high-pitched drone shifted register and became a woman's voice. "Hey, mister, I don't know who you are, but I think we're in a lot of trouble."
No shit, Jack thought, if this headache is anything to go by.
"Hey, can you hear me? I'm talking to you, buddy." This last was punctuated with a firm shove at his shoulder.
Jack grunted and tried to open his eyes, "tried" being the operative word. They appeared to be gummed shut. His mouth tasted like something had died in it.
That must have been some party, he thought blearily.
Party ... party ... why did that ring a very big, very wrong bell?
Oh.
Jack's eyes snapped open and he started to push himself up to his knees. A spike of blinding pain stabbed him in the temple, and at the same time, there was a sharp scuffling to his right as someone scrambled away, and a fast wrenching pain in his right wrist gave the pain in his head some competition.
"Ow!" said a startled female voice.
Jack, now on hands and knees, did a quick tactical assessment of the situation, as well as he could manage with his head feeling like it was about to split apart. He was naked and completely unarmed. Everything was fuzzy. He blinked and shook his head, causing the damp ground underneath him to heave like the deck of a ship. It didn't help with the fuzziness, though.
I'm not wearing my glasses.
He seemed to be in the woods. It was dark. Night.
No enemies that he could see or smell, at least none close enough that he was aware of them.
On the other hand, it was dark, his vision was fuzzy, and he had his hands full trying not to throw up or fall face-first in the dirt.
"What's going on?" he asked thickly.
"We're handcuffed together," the woman said. "I mean, you probably noticed that, but I thought you might know why ...?" Her voice trailed off on a hopeful question.
Jack turned and looked at her for the first time. At ... all of her. Oh. He wrenched his eyes up to her face.
They were close enough together, just a few feet apart, that he could see her well enough even in the dim light and without his glasses to tell it was a very pretty face: small and heart-shaped, with olive skin and large eyes and a wide, full mouth.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"No," she said emphatically. "I'm naked and freezing, I feel like I'm coming off a week-long bender, and I'm handcuffed to a total stranger in the middle of the woods. A stranger with knife scars. Would you be okay at that point?"
"Probably not," Jack had to admit.
As memories filtered back into his drug-fogged brain, dropping puzzle pieces into place about where they were and what they were doing here, his level of tension ramped up steadily. He recognized this woman, although it took a moment for him to remember from where. She was Fallon's secretary. He'd read her dossier, and had subsequently seen her at the party. His last sight of her, in fact, had been her limp body getting manhandled by one of Fallon's pride sisters into a cargo container, at which point things got extremely fuzzy and had not, he assumed, gone well.
"Do you know why we're here?" she asked.
"Shhh!"
Looking alarmed, she closed her mouth.
Jack cocked his head to the side, listening to the small sounds of the night. Every little rustle in the dark woods made his alertness spike. However, as seconds ticked by and nothing attacked them, he began to slowly come down from his adrenaline high.
He had, without realizing it, gone into the four-legged stance from which he could most easily assume his bear shape. However, there was nothing to attack—so far—and therefore nothing to gain by letting the bear come out. In fact, glancing down at his cuffed wrist, he wondered if it was even possible to take bear form right now. He had an uncomfortable feeling the answer was "no", at least not if he enjoyed having two functional hands.
Besides, they'd been unconscious for .... well, he had no idea how long, really. Was it even the same night?
We have to move. Get out of here.
But they also needed to get themselves together and let the drugs continue clearing out of their systems. The only asset they had right now was their brains, so the fewer stupid mistakes they made, the better their odds of survival. Just charging blindly into the woods was the sort of thing that got people killed.
Also, he needed the trust and help of this woman he seemed to be handcuffed to, if they were both going to get out of this alive. Right now all he was doing was scaring her.
He went from his battle-crouch to a more comfortable sitting position. The woman stared at him with wide eyes: striking eyes, brown flecked with gold, glittering in the twilight semidarkness under the trees. She was kneeling with her right arm over her breasts. Her left was down on the ground next to his, because she only had a few inches of chain on the handcuffs that separated them.
"Are we in danger?" she whispered.
Yes. "Not at the moment," he said.
"That's not comforting."
Casey, Jack thought. Casey McClaren. That was her name. His partner Avery would probably have memorized her entire folder; he'd be able to call up everything from her birthdate to her previous job history. Avery had one of those steel-trap brains that snagged onto details and never let go. Jack's skill set was geared more towards observational awareness—noticing booby traps, anticipating someone else's movements in a fight.
Jack wondered how long he'd been out. If it was still the same night, his partner might not even know he'd gone missing yet. The one bright spot in this whole clusterfuck was that Avery was out there somewhere, and would be looking for him as soon as it became obvious something had gone wrong.
"You are a very dangerous-looking person," Casey said.
"I know," he said. "I can't help it."
"Well, it's a little alarming for strangers who might wake up next to you unexpectedly." She shifted a little, the curve of one breast peeking out from behind her arm. "Who are you?"
Jack had been working around other shifters long enough that he was more or less inured to the embarrassment of being naked around people he didn't know. Most of the shifters he knew were equally blasé about it, at least in the company of fellow shifters. The fact that it clearly bothered her was interesting. He knew she was a shifter from her file—most of Fallon's employees were—but she evidently had not spent much time around her own kind, or els
e was unusually shy.
He relocated his eyes firmly on her face in the hopes of making her less nervous.
"I'm Jack Ross," he said, and tried out a smile. "Special Agent Jack Ross."
Her eyebrows went up—dark thick brows, making her large eyes look even bigger. "Special Agent? FBI?"
"Something like the FBI," he said. "You?"
She held out her right hand, reluctantly freeing the arm that had been trying hopelessly to conceal her breasts and their dark nipples. "I'm Casey."
I know, he could have said, but didn't. He took her hand in his. It was a strong hand, but small, and devoid of calluses like the ones on his own fingers from handling knives and guns. Casey was an office worker, not a fighter.
Jack couldn't remember her animal type off the top of his head, but it was most likely some sort of cat; lions tended to get along best with similar predators, and most of Fallon’s higher-level employees were felines. Which meant she'd be comfortable in the woods and used to being out at night. She would also have some experience at moving quietly. They were going to need that.
Most likely her shifted form was a small cat, a margay or a bobcat. That would fit the profile of Fallon's other known victims perfectly—a small, pretty shifter without any particular combat skills. They wouldn't want someone who might seriously hurt one of them, any more than cats went after mice who weighed twenty pounds and had fangs.
Hopefully we'll have a few surprises in store for them.
"It's nice to meet you, Casey," he said. "Do you think you can stand up?"
"I guess so," Casey said. She didn't look happy at the idea. "I'm not an expert, but when you're lost, aren't you supposed to stay where you are until someone finds you?"
"We're not lost," he said. "We were put here deliberately."
Casey's eyes narrowed. "You do know what's going on, don't you?"
"Some of it," he admitted. "And I'll tell you while we walk, but right now we need to get moving."
As he spoke, he started to get up. The cuff yanked on his wrist, and he went back to his knees, just in time to pull Casey down as she started getting up.
